Week 1 – Objective: A remake of a recognised image of the world.

While considering the global image & what in my practice would this would constitute I was reminded of a trip to Monument Valley, a place made famous by the pages of National Geographic, Hollywood films, advertising imagery & of course news items on the plight of the Navajo Nation Reservation.

As a child Sunday afternoons were often spent watching Wild West movies & as a teenager in the 70’s I had the obligatory poster covered room including (surprisingly) the ‘Marlboro Man’, which symbolized the freedom, danger, beauty, hope & progress that the west symbolised in the early movies we saw. [1] It symbolized everything of course bar the dangers of cigarette smoking.

The success of the branding/imagery still stands as one of the most successful to date – instantly recognisable.
“As a commercial icon, he is both reviled and revered. Yet one measure of this icon’s clout is that no matter how minimal the imagery gets — reduced on occasion to little more than a saddle and splash of red — it still remains instantly evocative of a mythical Marlboro country, of a mythical American cowboy and of the No. 1 brand of cigarettes that gave that cowboy real lung cancer”.[2]

The imagery will be different depending on the generation viewing it, today as a tourist in Monument Valley a cowboy, a Navajo local, will dress up in the iconic red shirt & ride out on his trusty steed & pose for tourist pictures & while it took me right back to those advertising posters I wonder what the biggest visual connection is today? Is it is it still the ideals of John Wayne cowboy movies or having a Marlboro Man lifestyle or is it just another cheesy tourist trap?

©CorinRossouw 2014

Refs:
1. https://indiancountrymedianetwork.com/culture/arts-entertainment/12-movies-shot-in-monument-valley-on-the-navajo-nation/
2. http://adage.com/article/special-report-the-advertising-century/marlboro-man/140170/